Review: Somebody's History - Fringe 2018

Orlando teacher Amy Selikoff takes her journey to understand race relations in the U.S. onto the stage. She’s white, but she cheerfully acknowledges her “qualifications” to speak on discrimination against nonwhites: “I read a lot of stuff, and some people told me I was thoughtful and funny.”

Well, she is funny – and the best bits of her up-and-down show, “Somebody’s History,” are framed as a stand-up act. This is good, edgy stuff – using Jim Crow laws as a source for one-liners and a Ku Klux Klan defender’s words as a ukulele ditty. I mean, that’s Fringe.

But the show flags when she reads long passages of spoken-word poetry. The reading loses the connection with the audience (not helping are a background of projected dates), and expecting the audience to volley between laughter with an edge and somber reflection causes emotional whiplash, not to mention jarring shifts in the room’s energy.

The Fringe Factor: “Somebody’s History” feels like a show still in development. There are good ideas on the table – the stand-up, songs and a personal story about a black man’s shooting in her home town -- but they need to be organized a little better. One Fringe-y touch: A call to activism. Go to SomebodysHistory.com/Now to support racial justice.

Curtain Call: At a Fringe festival, “Somebody’s History” is likely preaching anger at centuries of racial inequality to a sympathetic choir. But the flashes of creativity shown here give this impassioned effort a spark out of the ordinary.